


Dead One Walking

by Eisen



Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: Amnesia, Blood and Gore, Content may be replaced, Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5342378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisen/pseuds/Eisen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I remember nothing, yet nearly all I do whispers hints of a half-forgotten dream.</p><p>Who am I, to survive out of so many dead? Who am I, to not be given a Fate? Who am I, to save this world?</p><p>
  <span class="big">Who am I?</span>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <span class="small">Foreword: This is a crossover, an idea that just seemed to make sense after a discussion I had with my editor. I'll add the other fandom into the tags as the story develops to avoid spoilers for anyone keeping abreast of it.</span>
  </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead One Walking

**Author's Note:**

> Dead One Walking is a Kingdoms of Amalur Fanfiction by Eisen. Kingdoms of Amalur belongs to 38 Studios and Big Huge Games.
> 
> As ever, my undying gratitude to [ coffeeguru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeguru/pseuds/coffeeguru), my ever-eager editor and most loyal reader.
> 
> Also, [MaryDragon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marydragon/pseuds/marydragon), who has to be the best fic author I've come across and also happens to be a good friend and idea sounding board.

Green flashed through her consciousness - more a thought, an idea - than actual light. It washed through her, burning, but not an unpleasant burn. It was more like the burn one would associate with whisky coating one’s throat. Then came the sensation of something hard and unyielding - not warm, not cold - pressed against her back. There was a jolt, shortly followed by another and yet another, turning into the steady rhythm typically associated with wheels on cobbles. She became aware of a sound: wood creaking against metal, as well as the crunch of grit under heavy steps and the cadence of voices having a conversation.

 

The meaning of the words was lost upon her until the jostling stopped and she finally managed to link some of the sounds to their intention: “Better luck next time!”

 

Before she could begin to decypher the mocking regard, the rough surface beneath her tilted . As she slipped off, a feeling of weightlessness encompassed her, followed shortly by the empty embrace of oblivion.

 

⇔  
  


The first thing she was aware of was a considerable weight pressing down on her chest. Whatever it was it was lukewarm, and rapidly cooling. The second thing she became aware of was a most vile stink. A sickly sweet stench that was heavy in the air and seemed to have taken full residence in her sinuses. She had to struggle to fight back the lightheadedness and bile caused by the assault on her senses.

 

When it felt like she had finally won the struggle against her body’s immediate reactions, it retaliated with a pounding headache that had her scrunching up her eyes until the pain subsided. She tried to pry open her eyes, but immediately closed them again; even the weak light from wherever she lay was painfully bright, piercing her vision and taunting the semi-conquered headache back in full force.

 

She realised that she could not feel her lower limbs. She recalled having had lower limbs...somewhere...and sincerely hoped that she still had them. That troubled feeling was what got her to try and pry open her eyes a second time, but more tentatively. Her eyelids were still sticky from what had to have been prolonged unconsciousness, tears drying up into sand-like crystals.  Blinking them away, unable to swipe away the reminder of unwanted sleep, she slowly focused on her immediate surroundings.

 

The first thing she saw was a face...or at least what was left of something that had once been a face, or perhaps even something that was intended to have been a face, only to fall gruesomely short. In the end it did not matter, it was still horribly malformed and frozen into a tortured rictus in death. That was the smell surrounding her, filling her nostrils with its strangely, horribly familiar perfume, heady and noxious. She didn't know why she knew that scent, but as soon as the pieces fell into place, she didn't know how she had failed to immediately recognize it.

 

Liquid terror flowed down into her gut as she realised that this was what was lying on top of her - crushing her. A corpse, recently dead, if the latent temperature was anyway to judge, yet its appearance was of something that had been dead for months. Panic gripped her as she struggled, at first in vain, to thrust the dead thing off of her. Her movements were clumsy and uncontrolled as her arms and legs, which she thankfully seemed to still have, struggled into wakefulness, the tingling sensation of blood flowing back into them only compounding her fear.

 

Ignoring the sensation of hundreds of needle-like pricks on her skin, she finally managed to roll the dead weight off of her. Then, trying to ignore the uncommonly soft give of the surface  beneath her, she fought to climb out of her hole, and onto what turned out to be another corpse. Her feverish activity moved tangled limbs and torsos and the whole mass she had been buried in moved slightly - it was made entirely of bodies and she had been buried within.

 

As she managed to get to her feet on the unreliable surface she became increasingly aware of other sounds around her, noises beyond the ragged panting of her breath, the pounding pulse of her heart, the rushing wave of adrenalin in her ears and the buzzing of countless carrion flies. Over the cacophony of her immediate surrounds was the  dull, constant roar of gallons and gallons of water, drowning out anything further that could have informed her of her location, if there were other living things about.

 

She struggled to remain upright, balanced precariously as she was upon an unstable hill of flesh, skin, muscles and bones slowly giving way under her weight as she attempted to descend the macabre mound. When she finally reached what almost passed for solid ground - rock covered in silty puddles of water, blood and other fluids, she crouched down on a knee, attempting to gather herself and her thoughts. The bile soaked into the leg of the garment she was wearing, something best described as a pair of pants. The abrasive scratchiness of the fabric told her that whatever clothes she was wearing were most likely made of sackcloth or another poor, disposable material.  
  
She breathed in deeply, the exertions of escaping from her cocoon of corpses taking a toll on her after being  inactive for...she didn’t know how long. It was not the wisest thing to do. The overwhelming stench of so much rot launched her into a fit of coughing caused by her body trying to retch, but  as there was nothing in her stomach to throw up the convolutions served only to rasp her already raw throat. The dry feeling of the air hitting the back of her mouth, together with the thick coating on her tongue and teeth led her to believe that she had not had a liquid pass her lips for a long while.

 

She pushed herself to her feet again, the desire to be away from the nightmare behind her compounding with every breath, multiplying with every inch of her pants that got soaked by liquid offal.

 

Something oozed between her toes as they pressed into the silt. She had to fight the urge to instinctively pull them out again, to scrabble backwards to a place of safety that didn’t exist. She used her arms to straighten herself and swung them to balance so she would not  topple over again as the blood rushed from her head, leaving her on the edge of vertigo once more.  Screwing up her courage, she turned to take in her current location.

 

The sight before her elicited mixed feelings, the horror combining with something akin to awe. She was in a grand cavern, with giant columns of stone reaching down from a ceiling hidden in shadow. Several waterfalls rushed from hidden caves into bottomless depths all around her, reflecting light from an unknown source, silhouetting the the dark shapes of bats flitting through the air.

 

Growing out of the living stone was a magnificent structure - though it looked to be incomplete, scaffolding still hanging from the rockface in places. The monumental beauty was in stark contrast to the grotesque scenery closer to her. She could see the distortion of the air, shimmering heat making waves above decomposing bodies, the pile she escaped from being just one of several.

 

There was a path leading from where she stood to the stone-carved structure ahead, but it was paved with as many corpses as it was with cobbles, and she would need to watch her step as she tread it.

 

Grimly setting her jaw, breathing through her mouth to reduce the impact of decomposing flesh on her senses, she set forth, intent on escaping this place of majesty and nightmares.

 

 


End file.
